Evening's Morning
by AureliaScott
Summary: Hermione tries to escape past hurts. HGSS complete
1. Default Chapter

These characters are not mine, no matter how much I wish they were. I promise I will put them back where I found them when I am done!  
  
"You're late again, Ron," Hermione whispered as he planted a sift kiss on her cheek. "The longer I'm away, the longer they have to find me. Honestly, I feel like a monkey in a zoo." She peered around him to the restaurant window.  
  
"Hermione," Ron said, reaching across the table to cover her hand with his. He had a callous on one finger from holding a quill, she knew from memory. "Aren't you, sort of?"  
  
She snatched back her fingers and smoothed her hair back with the other hand. "I am not. I am myself, and they have no reason to follow me around -- "  
  
"Don't they? Coffee, tea, and some biscuits, please," he said to the waitress. He turned back to her. "After all, you're married to-"  
  
"I know who I'm married to, Ron. You don't have to tell me. Everyone knows who I'm married to. And they have photographs to prove it." She waved one hand wildly at the windows of the café, where photographers would soon begin to congregate.  
  
"Say his name," Ron said. "Tell me his name."  
  
"Ron, I ." She stared at her cup of coffee, valiantly trying to ignore him.  
  
"Why won't you say his name, Hermione? Go on, say it."  
  
"Harry!" she hissed, as the waitress brought the coffee. "Harry Potter." She pulled the ring she wore on her left hand off and set it on the table, staring at it intensely. His hands on hers felt the way Harry's had once, concerned and tender, even trembling a bit as he pushed a simple band over her knuckle, sending shivers down her spine with everything it signified and insinuated. "I know my own husband's name."  
  
They had married almost straight out of school, at a time in both their lives when a shared fear of their professors, love for Gryffindor, and easy, childish affection had been enough to create a bond that they thought could outlast anything. They had moved to the magical part of London, where Harry, the youngest Quidditch player in a century, lived in a dreamy wizarding world. Hermione had taken a job as a research assistant in a teaching hospital near their small apartment. Harry had had trouble with her choice, but if Muggle job was good enough for her parents, it was good enough for her.  
  
"We're not doing anything wrong, Ron," she stated, as a matter of fact.  
  
"Oh yeah?" The young Weasley picked up his teacup and took a sip. He, too, watched the ring on the table, as if he expected it to grow legs and billet off the table, but it just sat there, a plain gold band in true Muggle fashion: they both had insisted on unenchanted rings. "Then why can't you use his name? And why is your wedding ring sitting on the table instead of on your finger?"  
  
She snatched up the tiny circle and shoved it back on, all the way against her palm where once there had been a band of pale flesh, but now was all congruous. She hated this conversation: it was cyclical, like a bad telly episode she would have watched at her parents' house. And she could never, ever win, even if it was against Ron Weasley.  
  
The music that had been conjured for the bar paused between songs, and Hermione could catch Harry's name in the announcement. To her, the Boy-Who- Lived would always be just Harry, her best friend and husband. She exhaled sharply and jutted her head in the sound's general direction. "I hate those things."  
  
She took a sip of her coffee. It was too hot, but she refused to let that show on her face and swallowed. Ron looked away from her. "We can't go on like this, Mione."  
  
"Like what?" she snapped reflexively. He didn't move.  
  
"Like this, like what we're doing." His voice was high, plaintive. "We just can't. Even if we both are in London now."  
  
"Ron, you're crazy. Nobody really thinks anything's going on, just whoever writes the headlines for the Daily Prophet. And nothing is going on, right?" Ron still hadn't looked up at her.  
  
Ever since he had gotten a job at the Ministry and moved to London, the two of them had spent more and more time out together while Harry was at his games, slowly getting more and more clandestine as the reporters caught on to what was going on.  
  
The steam from her coffee was making loops across her view of Ron. He was right, of course. This wasn't just two friends from school meeting for the occasional cup of coffee. At least for her, it was becoming the most important part of her life, and a large part of her couldn't forgive herself.  
  
He wasn't talking: he hadn't even bothered to argue with her. "Well, if you're just going to sit there and not even talk to me, I'm leaving." Her chair squawked loudly when she pushed it away from the table as she rose.  
  
"Hermione," Ron said, standing up to look her in the eye. "It's just not fair to Harry."  
  
He kissed her then, no mere peck on the cheek, and the scent of Muggle chemicals and day-old perfume filling him as he said goodbye to her. He had always loved that smell, even before he could stand her, and he was going to miss it.  
  
"Goodbye, Mione. Owl me when you get it figured out."  
  
And so she was left when she had meant to leave, her mouth still itching from where his moustache had scratched her.  
  
She came home that night to find Harry on the thoroughly Muggle sofa they kept in the living room for when her family came to visit. All the lights in the apartment were out, and he must have cooked dinner the Muggle way some time ago.  
  
"I might not have been much of a student, Hermione," his voice penetrating the imposed darkness. "But I am bright enough to figure out that something's going on," he said, pausing harshly, as if the next words were too bitter to speak. "Even if Ron hadn't called for you."  
  
That was the night they had decided to separate. She would always love Harry Potter, but it was simply not meant to be. She cast a spell quickly over the room to separate his from hers (the coffeemaker was hers, of course) and pressed his ring into his palm: he kept the apartment in London with her blessing - she'd never liked London much, anyway - and they separated. Amicably, of course: or so they said, for they'd been friends far too long to stay angry.  
  
Sitting in her parent's study, she wrote letter after letter, some to Harry, some to Ron, some to herself, and some to Professor McGonagall, with whom she had maintained sporadic contact.  
  
"He'll never be the typical Quidditch player, with the groupies, and a different woman every night," she wrote. "But I know he's been dating. In a little way, I suppose it makes me happy. After all, neither of us dated much at Hogwarts." She could hear McGonagall's voice in her head as she wrote. What about Viktor Krum, Miss Granger? Obviously, that had never gone anywhere. Besides, she didn't like a man with too many muscles.  
  
Most of them she kept to herself, in a desk drawer, and but these she sent, tied to the leg of an owl, never telling her parents what she was doing. Later, she wrote:  
  
"I had considered moving back home with my parents in Surrey permanently, but as you remember, they just don't understand what it is I do. They love me, yes, and they always thought Harry was a 'nice boy,' but really, they have no way of understanding what it's like to live with someone like Harry Potter. He gets so wrapped up in his games that it's like I don't even exist, like I'm not there, like I don't matter. I suppose that should have been in past tense ."  
  
She had begun to realize how desperate she was sounding. "I've quit my job at the research facility. To easy not to use magic. I may never fit into the Muggle world. What ever shall I do?"  
  
She sent that owl and it returned a few days later with a reply, an invitation to teach at Hogwarts. It seemed a position had recently opened up. 


	2. First Watch

First Watch  
  
"Are you all right, Professor?" asked one of her first year students. Hermione nodded absently and smiled at the girl, trying to reassure her. All too well she remembered her own first few days at Hogwarts. It was not an easy experience, even for people more gregarious than she had been. The child was a Hufflepuff, she noted.  
  
"I'm fine, Frances," she said, trying to sound poised. That seemed to placate the girl and she walked away, obviously still getting used to her robes. She was a Muggle-born, obviously, and as she tripped on the hem of her academic robes, it was clear she had never worn such things before.  
  
Given her experience in Muggle chemistry, Hermione had been awarded the position of Potions teacher. While she was moving into her new quarters, a few days before classes began, it had struck her who had been in charge of Potions in her and Harry's day: Snape, she had recalled, though she supposed she would be obliged to call him by his first name, now. Samson, Samuel, Saint John .  
  
She had glimpsed the man in question at the opening ceremonies, where it seemed to her he attended more out of requirement than to actually enjoy the celebration. He had barely paid attention to the Sorting, not even to the new Slytherins. She wondered if he was still Head of House. Though he had caught her staring at him, he had not acknowledged her then, even as a former student, and she had not seen him since. All the better then, she thought. He had terrified her as a child, mocked her and derided her almost to the point of tears once over the size of her teeth. Oh, she'd fixed that, but a glance in the mirror reminded her just how dreadful he had been.  
  
Hermione swept into the Headmaster's office. She was trying very hard to take on the attitude of a teacher here at Hogwarts, but it wasn't going very well. She had lived as a Muggle for too long to make her robes swish the way she remembered just yet. Practice, practice, Hermione. Even her robes, sapphire blue with indigo trim, were a more ornate design than those worn by the older teachers, but a style that was gaining popularity among the younger wizards, especially around London. Albus Dumbledore sat behind the massive desk, just as she remembered it.  
  
"Ah, Professor Potter," he said, quietly. "Is it still Potter, or shall I refer to you as Miss Granger?"  
  
She was silent for a moment, wondering what she ought to answer. It was not easy to be married to The-Boy-Who-Lived, but it might be even more difficult to be divorced from him. "Granger will suffice, I think, sir. Everyone already knows . well, what happened. No point in attracting extra attention by using his name."  
  
Dumbledore nodded sagely. "A wise choice, Hermione. I think it would be acceptable for you to call me Albus, would it not? You are no longer the child I once had to keep an eye on." The wit in his tone made her smile and she felt content in Dumbledore's omniscience. It felt strange to think of him by his first name, but she supposed they were colleagues now. "How do you feel about your new position?"  
  
"It - I think I will get used to it, sir - Albus. It's quite an honor." He nodded again, agreeing with her assessment. Her question from earlier came to mind. "May I ask what Professor Snape is doing now?"  
  
"Severus is currently employed teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts." Severus, that was it. "He has long wanted the position, but only with Voldemort . taken care of was it appropriate to place him there."  
  
Everyone in the school had known that Snape had been one of Voldemort's followers. She had even caught a glimpse, years ago, of the Dark Mark he wore, that he would always wear, even after turning away from Dark Magic. His entire career as a spy had been recorded in the Daily Prophet the very day the war had ended. Sitting in the safety of Dumbledore's office, she felt a pang of pity balancing her ancient fear of Snape, who would have to live with his mistakes, no matter how thoroughly he regretted them. She, at least, could simply use a different name.  
  
"Severus is a good man, Hermione. Don't let your memories of him color your professional relationship. He simply . made a few mistakes." Startled, she looked up: Dumbledore had always seemed to be able to read the thoughts of his students. "I hope your rooms are acceptable. You will find them preferable to your former quarters."  
  
Hermione smiled, thinking of the old days with Harry and Ron in Gryffindor Tower, not so many years, but an eternity ago. Eight years and a war: so much had changed since then . She had been dismissed, she realized. "Thank you sir, yes," she mumbled and left.  
  
Hermione was heading back to those rooms when she saw a dark figure in the corridor ahead of her. Snape, she thought reflexively. She was in the wing that housed all the teachers' rooms, she knew, but what were the chances of running into him right now?  
  
"Professor Potter," he rumbled, nodding respectfully. Well, that was one of the nicer perks of being a teacher here: respect. "It's good to see you here," he muttered, falsely. Well, respect was respect, even if it was false.  
  
She nodded. "Thank you, professor. As long as we're being proper," she said forcefully. "It's Granger again."  
  
The sneer he always bore dropped from his lips. "I'm sorry to hear that, professor," he said, with more feeling than she could ever remember him using.  
  
"Not as sorry as I am to say it."  
  
"It was not a . mutual decision?" He looked genuinely concerned behind that cruel mask of his - which was the last thing she wanted from Snape. She did not want to believe she was so pathetic that Severus Snape could pity her.  
  
"It was. Harry and I are just different people ." Her voice was starting to tremble now and she was gripped by a fear that must have shown on her face, a fear showing her emotions to this man. "Excuse me, professor," she whispered as she pushed past him in pursuit of her rooms, willing the tears in her eyes not to fall until she was far enough away.  
  
Severus stepped aside for the girl to pass by, pausing in the dark hallway to watch her walk away, and then turned to the door to his rooms. "Frigidum," he muttered at it, and it swung open. He stalked toward the fireplace, almost forgetting to shut the door behind him.  
  
The room was dark, with an eerie green light pouring in through the glass around the cold torches hanging from the ceiling, black curtains on windows he'd blacked out years ago. Everywhere but the area nearest the fire was icy cold, just as he liked it: it was the type of place one could wear a sweater and cloak and never sweat a drop. It was perfect, especially by his bed hung with dark curtains all around.  
  
The Daily Prophet was still on the armchair where he had left it that morning, boasting a picture of Harry Potter and the Quidditch Cup. He had been surprised when he had heard they were to marry, but he had never expected it to end - especially not this soon. Severus read the first lines of the article his eyes settled on: "It's about time England won the Cup again. Back where it belongs," Potter declared last Friday after winning the Quidditch World Cup. That was something James would have said, Severus thought before he could check himself.  
  
Damn that Potter boy for - for what, Severus? For being good at Quidditch? For not being good at being married? No, for not appreciating his wife. Hermione was too good for him. Not that Potter wasn't, well, a worthy human being, no matter how much he hated to admit it. Hermione Granger had always been intellectual in ways Potter would never be able to appreciate, he mused to himself. He remembered her better than he wanted to admit, an outstanding student in every possible way, a teacher's dream - and nightmare, too, for her loud mouth. He smiled to himself. Perhaps she' changed her talking habits as much as she'd changed her appearance.  
  
He tossed the Prophet on the fire and sat in the armchair - the people in the pictures screaming silently and running for cover - calling a book on his chosen concentration over from the shelf. A wave of his wand on the chill air conjured a mug with his initials on it filled with steaming coffee: never would he learn to like tea. He considered, for a brief moment, apparating himself to someplace Mediterranean, someplace he where he had a chance to get coffee moderately better than the stuff the Hogwarts house elves brought him. Too much work, he decided, and fell asleep there in front of the fire.  
  
"Hermione Granger. I am pleased to see you at Hogwarts again." Professor McGonagall, the Head of Gryffindor House, had always been a comfort to her. The older woman's eyes were glittering brightly beneath her black witch's hat, in that old way she remembered. It was nice to have a familiar face, one from whom she both got and wanted concern. She was dressed in her teaching robes still, beneath them a bright tartan skirt, her hair done up in the old bun Hermione remembered. "Do sit down."  
  
Hermione was ushered into the living room and into the chair across from the professor's. She was warm enough, beside the fire, yet she pulled her robes around herself. School had been in session for nearly a fortnight, but Hermione never spoke to any of the other teachers. In fact, rarely left her rooms at all, except for classes, required meetings, and the occasional meal. Somehow, she constantly felt that someone, somewhere, was looking at her with pity, an overwhelmingly creepy sensation, like what her Muggle parents would have called a "sixth sense."  
  
"What can I do for you, my dear?" The older woman smiled at her. "You sent your last owl a few days before your arrival, but if I didn't know better I'd think you were avoiding me since then."  
  
Hermione blushed. "I've been avoiding almost everyone, I'm afraid, Minerva. I'm still getting used to all this . silence." She gestured vaguely at the air around her head. "But I wanted to thank you, professor, for helping get this position. That's why I came to see you tonight."  
  
"Why my dear girl, I had nothing to do with it. If anything, you should thank your friend Weasley. He and Albus have become quite thick since he got his position with the Ministry. One owl from him and Albus was willing to switch around the entire staff of Hogwarts."  
  
Hermione knew that Ron and Dumbledore had been exchanging letters, but she had never thought much of it, keeping in relatively close contact with Minerva herself.  
  
"He always did fancy you. You know, Hermione, I never would have said this while you were still married, but I always thought Ron would have been a better choice for you, my dear."  
  
Hermione exhaled sharply. It only made sense that Ron would have been anxious to help her out. It was, however, far too close to home. She was wanted to say something, to ask Minerva what she had heard, but Minerva, whose eyes were obviously more concerned with measuring sugar for her tea than watching her expression, went on.  
  
"The wife of a Minister of Magic attracts far less attention than that of the youngest Quidditch player in a century, after all." Minerva glanced up at Hermione. With a flick of her wand she conjured a cup and offered it to the girl. She declined. "That always bothered you."  
  
Hermione suddenly wished she accepted the tea: if nothing else she could have sipped it to keep from talking. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be married not only to The-Boy-Who-Lived, but the Quidditch darling of England, not to mention the world? Every little girl and half the boys anywhere near our age read about it in the Daily Prophet and wondered why it hadn't been them."  
  
Minerva nodded silently. It was hard to argue when what the girl was saying was so true.  
  
"So now we're over, and everybody wants to know how I could kick out my wonderful husband Harry. I mean, honestly, is it that hard to understand? But no-one gives a damn how I feel about anything. It's like I don't even exist." Unintentionally, Hermione had let her voice become shrill even in its softness.  
  
Minerva nodded calmly. That must have been a habit she'd picked up from Dumbledore, that sage nod that made her look older than she was. Or perhaps just wiser than Hermione remembered.  
  
One of the house elves brought in coffee - obviously, word had gotten out of Hermione's whereabouts in the kitchens. "Your letters broke my heart, my dear. Especially there at the end. Then again," she said, seeming to have just noticed something. "Ron never could match your intelligence."  
  
Hermione did not speak for several moments. At last, Minerva broke the silence. "I have heard that Harry is living with Cho Chang," she said, after a moment.  
  
Hermione almost laughed out loud. "Cho? Come on, he can do better than that."  
  
"I suppose, by that comment, that you mean yourself," Minerva said, looking at Hermione over the rims of her smallish, square, gold glasses.  
  
She shook her head. "Everything with Harry was a foolish inclination: I see that now. It started as a childhood passion and it ought to have stayed that way." The coffee cup in her hands felt good, a bit of warmth in the cold of Minerva's quarters, the fire dwindling unchecked. It was the dreadful coffee the house elves prepared. At least it smelled good.  
  
Allowing that last to drop, Minerva started again. "And are you seeing someone, Miss Granger?"  
  
The question hung in the air like one of those obnoxious house ghosts, unanswered for several moments. Hermione was just silent for a while, watching the steam rise from her coffee cup. She could almost see Ron's face through it, as she had the last time they were together. "I received word that there was a position available here almost before proceedings began." She sighed heavily. "I barely had time to pack, much less date. I've never let my eye stray from Harry."  
  
"Except for Ron."  
  
Hermione snapped back from that dream she had been in. The older woman was looking at her as if she was searching for something particular in her face: it was useless to argue. "How did you know about that?"  
  
She smiled. "I may be old, Hermione, but I'm not stupid."  
  
Minerva swished her wand absently, and the empty teacup disappeared. She kept her eyes on the girl: Hermione seemed on the verge of tears. In fact, every time Minerva had caught a glimpse of her in the last two weeks, Hermione had looked like that. She changed the subject.  
  
"You fit in here, Hermione: you were always meant to be an academic. You'll find where you belong soon enough. Besides, you're not the first to live in the shadow of a Potter, my girl."  
  
Hermione remembered her history, and all the stories about James and Lily Potter. More than that, she had seen the way people acted around Harry: their days at Hogwarts had been colored by Harry's renown, every one.  
  
"You'll get out of it. We Gryffindors are known for our bravery, are we not?"  
  
Hermione looked at her former Head of House, glad for the hundredth time she had kept up contact. "You've said that before, Minerva, but I don't seem to know how to be brave. Not any more."  
  
"My dear girl, you may not know, but you will learn. That was always your best quality." The wisdom in her voice quelled any response that leapt to Hermione's tongue, and that was that.  
  
Hermione went back to her rooms feeling remarkably unsatisfied. Professor McGonagall, had always seemed so understanding and helpful. Could it be that all the professors were tainted by her memories of them? She sat down in the armchair by the fire, noticing for the first time how much professors' quarters were the same. Save for the particular color scheme, which for her was subdued blues and purples, her living room was precisely the same as McGonagall's. Ah, well, creativity was overrated.  
  
She summoned one of the house elves and asked for a cup of coffee. It would have been easy enough to do it herself, but she just didn't feel like it. She had the feeling that tonight was going to be another sleepless night, another like so many she had spent towards the end of her pathetic marriage. Sipping the coffee, staring into the fire, she wondered when Harry would be home. It wasn't like him to be out this late .  
  
Oh. A mental shake brought Hermione back to the present. She wished very much she had not just allowed her mind to go down that particularly painful path. In spite of this wish, an unbidden memory flashed to her mind, of one night like a thousand others, when Harry had come home, streaked with mud from his Quidditch game.  
  
"You won," she observed from the grin on his face. She had long since stopped listening to the game at work. He nodded and bent down to kiss her. "Go take a shower."  
  
"Oh, come on, Mione. No congratulations?" And he'd been drinking. Harshly, almost defiantly, she stood up and put her arms around him. She kissed him, hard, feeling his arms curl around her. It was old habit, she knew, the way he held her. The fire she had felt for him all those years ago, when Harry had been the best thing that had ever happened to her, when the one everybody loved had loved her. Harry Potter had stood up for her at school, had validated Hermione Granger's bookish personality by recognizing her worth.  
  
And Hermione Potter had become a different woman from that shrill little girl. Armed with Harry's last name, she had found a job she was good at, Muggle though it was, and found friends who liked her for her wit and not what she could do for them. Strangest change of all, and slowest to come to the surface, was the realization that Harry's strength resisted her influence. He had grown up, and would no longer let her tell him how to do things. Like what time to come home.  
  
So this new last name, one that at once signified a wizarding life and the love of one wizard in particular, and still tore her away from both, had become a weight that threatened to stifle her. It was a fate like being pressed to death until she could no longer bear it, and still she had muttered 'more weight.' And then a light, and redheaded, mustached light, had come into her life once again, and she had dared to reclaim a name she thought she'd forgotten, and a happiness she thought she'd lost. She drank that light in until it burned, burned away every happy thought it had brought and illumed.  
  
And she, a woman of two names, had been destroyed.  
  
Suddenly, Hermione realized that her coffee was cold and that she was exhausted. She set her half-drunk cup on the mantle and went to bed. At least one thing was clear: she was willing to follow Minerva's suggestion. 


	3. Second Watch

Second Watch  
  
Hermione was lecturing the fifth year Ravenclaw and Slytherin students about the virtues of pig's toe for apparition powders - it was a system she had perfected herself, and she was quite proud of it.  
  
"Using too much, however, creates a highly unstable compound which has been known to cause everything from minor burns to permanent vanishing," she said, and she ground a bit to demonstrate the proper consistency. As long as she talked about something she understood, as long as she avoided thinking on and analyzing a certain eight years of her life, she seemed to be all right.  
  
One of her students raised a hand. It was a blonde Ravenclaw, one she rather favored for being Muggle born, like she was. "Yes, Emilia?"  
  
"What would happen if you blended a filler in with the ground pig's toe?"  
  
"Excellent question, Miss King. You mean using something to stretch the pig's toe, to take up extra space in the compound without overusing the substance itself. I have, in fact, tried to blend a bit of ground unicorn horn in with it, which as we all recall is the most stable powder in magic, but to no avail."  
  
"Have you tried cornstarch?" Emilia asked, quietly.  
  
"Cornstarch?" Hermione repeated, uncomprehending. It was a simple question, yet blending magic and non-magic compounds was something she had remarkably little experience with. She'd lived a life without a wand for so many years that she couldn't help but have to rethink these things.  
  
"It's a neutral powder used in Muggle cooking. My mother uses it."  
  
"I . I don't know, Miss King. Combining magical and Muggle substances is often risky. I will look into that, however. Thank you."  
  
"Doesn't she know anything at all?" muttered a red haired Slytherin, one she recognized as a favorite of Snape's, to the girl beside her.  
  
"Miss Haverflash, if you have something to add to the class you will raise your hand," Hermione snapped, without looking up from the experiment she was setting up. "And five points from Slytherin for that insubordination."  
  
Had it been another house that had just been punished, Hermione would have thought that sounded frighteningly Snapelike.  
  
Emilia's question burned in Hermione's mind the rest of that afternoon and night. A botched potions lesson - looking like a fool in her own chosen profession - was unbearable. By the next morning, she had decided to brave one of her greatest fears.  
  
She entered the Great Hall through the teachers' door, near the head table. Juvenile though it seemed, it still gave her a thrill, like she were breaking several school rules at once.  
  
Severus always sat in the chair on the far right: Hermione remembered that from her days as a student. Half frightened, half excited, like a child about to do something she knew she shouldn't, Hermione chose the seat beside his. It was Professor Flitwick's usual place, she knew, but he had always been so amiable she was sure he wouldn't mind. How could he mind, after all, being spared a meal with Snape?  
  
The smell of bacon frying filled the Great Hall long before it appeared. She could imagine her mother's porridge back home, and eggs with just the right amount of salt. Outside of her fantasy, Hermione wished for the millionth time she could find a cup of decent coffee in all of Hogwarts.  
  
Severus came in, late as she might have expected. She could only assume that that was the best way for him to avoid unnecessary banter - and she would have been right.  
  
"Miss Granger," he said, trying to hide his shock as he sat down beside her.  
  
"Professor," she said, sounding more like the child he remembered than she looked. "I was hoping you might be able to answer a question for me, as the former Potions Master."  
  
He looked at her suspiciously. It was almost funny that someone had to ask his advice on something, anything. He sincerely considered telling her to figure it out on her own (she was, after all, more than capable): he even would have considered deducting points from Gryffindor if he still could, just to make his point.  
  
"On what subject, Professor? I haven't got all day."  
  
She was silent for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts as much as possible.  
  
"Is it about your classes? I am willing to go over your lesson plans, if that's what you'd like. Though I must say, it would be a waste of my time. You are a competent Potions Mistress. You even seem to enjoy the subject--"  
  
"No. It's not that," she interrupted quietly.  
  
"Then spit it out, Miss Granger." He reached for the salt, brushing the edge of her plate with a bilious black sleeve.  
  
She hesitated an instant, and then dove in full force. "One of my students asked me a question I was unable to answer," she stuttered, with undue haste.  
  
"And you hoped I might ease your feelings of inadequacy." He sniffed disdainfully. "How good of you to think of me. Well, Miss Granger, I'm afraid no-one is responsible for that save yourself."  
  
Minerva, on her other side, handed the plate to Hermione, who elegantly chose a few strips of bacon, while missing the half smiling glance the woman gave her. "It was about using Muggle cooking ingredients in apparition powders."  
  
"Muggle . cooking ingredients?"  
  
She did her best to keep from rolling her eyes at him: she was treading dangerous territory already. "The use of cornstarch as a stable filler for pig's toe."  
  
"And who was it, Miss Granger, that asked this ingenious question?"  
  
"Emilia King," she said, gesturing with her water goblet at the Ravenclaw table.  
  
He looked at the girl over the rim of his own goblet. "May I suggest that you not listen to the culinary wonderings of a Muggle born? They are almost always incorrect in their assertions, little or great. Oh, and you, Professor Potter: what might you have to say about Muggle practices? Perhaps those concerning divorce?"  
  
Suddenly, bacon and eggs did not seem so appealing. In fact, the very sight of it made her a little ill. She could feel tears pricking at the back of her eyes again. Swearing silently, Hermione excused herself to Minerva and disappeared though the back doors.  
  
She's a Muggle who knows Magic, Severus thought to himself, taking a deep swallow of his rancid coffee. No better than any of the other Muggle born.  
  
"Alohomora," Severus said, unlocking the door of his office: there was no mistaking Albus Dumbledore's knocking.  
  
"Severus, you have a lot of explaining to do concerning your pointed comments to Professor Granger."  
  
"Call her what you will, but she is still a Potter," Severus said, icily. "Unable to deal with not getting their way."  
  
Albus was still standing in front of the great, black desk, which gloomily dominated the eerily green office. "I will not have your personal grudges against James Potter interfering with the efficiency of my faculty, Severus."  
  
"This is not about James," Severus spat. "Hermione Potter was always an upstart. And I will not pretend she is not the reason I was finally . awarded my position, Albus."  
  
"You aren't upset at having been replaced so quickly, are you, Severus? It was you, after all, who taught the girl potions in the first place." Dumbledore was tipping his head to glance over his glasses at him, letting his voice become increasingly denigrating.  
  
"She is a competent Potions Mistress, as I have said before, no matter how much remains for her to learn. And just what is it I have to explain?" He may have had to report his ultimate actions to the Headmaster, but Severus Snape was not a man used to explaining himself, and he was getting impatient.  
  
"I will be teaching her first period while she collects herself. That is twice now you have reduced your fellow teacher to tears. She is no longer a student to be bullied into compliance."  
  
Snape set down his quill and stood up to look Albus Dumbledore in the eye. "Isn't she?"  
  
"Do not try to intimidate me, Severus. You of all people know I am not someone you want to have as an enemy."  
  
"What is it I have to explain to you?" he repeated, with forced smoothness.  
  
"Not to me, Severus. To Miss Granger." Albus' usually twinkling eyes were steely: it was a look Severus knew well from darker days, when his unorthodox and unrevealing style had moved the Headmaster to ire. Albus turned to go with a swish of his robes. "And I will know if you do not include an apology."  
  
Severus sat in his office, deliberately delaying from going to see her. He was not the sort of man who took an apology lightly - especially when that apology came by order. Still, Dumbledore was right: he was not a man to made an enemy. He paused in the corridor on his way to scold a gaggle of first years, moving through the halls like a frightened herd, muttering after them under his breath.  
  
It was strange to him that the potions classes were no longer taught in the dungeons, but she had insisted almost immediately upon her arrival. It had meant a few especially powerful incantations on Flitwick's part, but here was her office, neatly located on the first floor.  
  
"Go away, professor," Hermione called when he knocked at her office door.  
  
"Professor Potter," he said, through the door. "I do not wish what I have to say to be heard by the entire school. Open the door!"  
  
She threw open the door, but didn't look at him. He shut it and stood on the rug just inside the office while Hermione rushed over to her desk to rearrange papers.  
  
"I have come to issue . an apology," he said silkily, speaking barely over a whisper.  
  
"Well, you should." She considered punctuating the sentence with his name there, but the last thing she wanted was to be on a first name basis with Severus Snape. She kept pretending to be busy, just so she didn't have to look at him.  
  
He looked around the office: it was decorated in rich blues and regal purples, and almost nothing in the office was enchanted - even the fire looked real. She really was a Muggle who happened to know magic, he mused. The entire place smelled of potions he knew altogether too well and the weak coffee the house elves made, as well as a Muggle perfume that must have been hers. He made no effort to speak, not even to apologize correctly.  
  
"Why do you resent me so much?" Hermione demanded, spinning around to face him, finally fed up with his silence. "Did I wound you in some past life? Forget to return a library book you wanted? Publish a theory before you could?"  
  
Snape made a growling sound in the back of his throat. She may have grown up a bit, but Hermione Potter - Granger, he reminded himself - had changed her style not a bit: she was every bit as blunt as she had ever been. "I do not resent you on a . professional level. One might even say I respect your work. No, professor: I resent a decision you made nearly eight years ago now."  
  
"Harry?" Hermione guessed, incredulously.  
  
"Yes, of course." He stalked over to the desk where she had ceased to pretend to work. "Now it's my turn, professor. Why did you choose Potter over Weasley? He would be the more logical choice, given your . temperament." He spoke smoothly, choosing his words precisely, and she could feel his eyes on the top of her head. This verbal thrust and parry was thrilling for him, unheard of in these dark halls of Hogwarts.  
  
Hermione hesitated a moment, but the words came spilling over her lips before she had a chance to check them. "Because Harry offered more. I never wanted fame, or my picture in the paper, but at least it meant they accepted me." She hadn't looked at him while she was speaking, but now she met his gaze straight on. "And now it's my turn. Why do you hate Harry Potter so?"  
  
"The answer to that is of a rather . personal nature." Evasive as ever, he ran his fingers along the edge of her desk, then rested his palm on the surface. "My debt here is paid."  
  
He bowed, an effort archaic even in the wizarding world, and swept out of the office in abrupt but characteristic fashion, shutting the door a little too hard behind him. She looked down at her fingers, nervously picked at, the nailbeds nearly destroyed, and then her eyes caught on something: there where his palm had been, wrapped in cheesecloth and tied with plain, brown twine, was exactly three ounces of Muggle cornstarch. 


	4. Third Watch

Third Watch  
  
Though she avoided him like the plague for a week afterwards, the fact that Severus Snape had apologized to her was enough to keep Hermione Granger going. The mere strangeness, the refreshing newness of it, was startling, like a splash of cool water, and their conversation played over and over in her mind.  
  
Then, perhaps ten days after their unexpected conversation in her office, something occurred to her - a snatch of words she had not fully analyzed yet. Why did he say he resented her marriage to Harry Potter? Disagreed with, disapproved of, yes, but why resent?  
  
Whenever she had been perplexed, whenever confused, Hermione had always sought to comfort of the library. Knowledge surrounding her made her breathe easier, like a weight slipping from her shoulders. Now as every other time, her puzzle led Hermione to the library. Hermione had always liked the Hogwarts library - it brought back happy memories from a time long past. There was something about the dusty scent of old books, the smell of glue and parchment she could only find here, that was comforting. To her, of course, it was the smell of knowledge. She found the same seat she had always liked as a student, and pulled the yearbooks from her days at Hogwarts, starting with her seventh year.  
  
The first page she happened to open to contained an image of her and Harry, in their first days of dating. It was a picture snapped of them kissing, reveling in the newness of the relationship. The caption below it was 'Class Couple'. It had been expected, of course, for the two of them to wind up together. Either Harry or Ron. She had even overheard a few debates about which one she should choose: she had laughed at that, at least at first.  
  
There were pictures of Snape, of course. As she went further back, she found a shot of him refereeing Harry's famous five minute game back in their first year. Yet nothing that pointed to why, exactly, Severus Snape hated Harry Potter.  
  
"I remember sitting with Harry and Ron, right here at this very table," she said suddenly to no-one at all. They were always trying to figure out some elusive spell for their adventures or how to cram a year's worth of lessons into the boys' minds the night before final exams. In fact, it had been here in the library that she and Harry had had their first kiss, at the end of their sixth year. She'd loved him almost from the start, though she'd never dared let on for years.  
  
At last, Hermione had pored over the yearbooks from her time enough. There was obviously nothing here. But the answer is always here someplace, she thought. Don't give up so easily.  
  
The next logical step in her scientific pursuit was the the yearbooks from Snape's day. They were yellow, and not in the comforting, wise way the others were, but rather like the textbooks her parents had kept from dentistry school.  
  
She flipped through one at random. It was sprinkled with pictures of James and Lily Potter the way her later books featured her and Harry. She would have recognized her once-in-laws, even without the captions, from the album Harry looked at every night.  
  
Yet today she found a shot she was sure Harry didn't have. It reminded her of the picture of the two of them as class couple: James and Lily frozen forever, eternally kissing outside in the yard. Harry had always looked like James, even more as he got older, she thought. Perhaps it was something in the way Lily was standing, the way the sunlight caught her dark auburn hair as she moved against her future husband, but, in a revelation that made her blood switch away from her heart, Hermione thought that Lily looked an awful lot like her.  
  
It was like another splash of that icy water each time, as Hermione kept looking though the books, year after year, studying every photo and reading every caption. Sometimes, she almost forgot what she was looking for, captivated by her resemblance to Lily, even if it was only in a very few shots.  
  
One thing that surely did not escape her, however, was how rarely Severus Snape appeared in the yearbooks from his days as a student. He was listed, she saw, in his house Quidditch team, but she had to search to find a single picture of him.  
  
At last, a small shot of the man, almost accidental, in the corner of a larger picture of a corridor. He was young, that was undeniable, but he looked much the same: the same black eyes that glinted with dark malice, the same curtain of black hair that fell over those eyes to his shoulders, the same black robes that flowed behind him like a mist. With a devilish half-grin, she wondered if he had that characteristic swish even back then.  
  
"Oh," Hermione said, picking up Minerva's copy of the Prophet. The girl had gotten pretty as she'd grown up, Minerva thought. Though they'd owled a few times a month since Hermione had graduated, they had never found the time to get together. "Harry shaved the goatee."  
  
Minerva had kept up with Harry Potter's career more than the next witch - after all, she had been his Head of House - and was sure she must have noticed his goatee when he had first grown it, but now it just seemed a part of his image. "Has he?"  
  
"I told him to grow it," Hermione said, proudly. "Ninety percent of men are flattered by facial hair, and half of them need a goatee. Harry, for example. And Ron finally looks like a grown-up with his moustache."  
  
She set down the Prophet, with its headline of "England Wins!" and gave a fond smile at Harry holding aloft his trophy.  
  
"Severus, of course, would look ridiculous with a beard," she continued, absently.  
  
Behind her teacup, Minerva hid a smile. "Speaking of whom, did you know he once played Quidditch?"  
  
"Slytherin Beater." Seeing Minerva's look of surprise, Hermione quickly added, "I looked through the old yearbooks last night. What I can't figure out is why I've never heard about it before."  
  
"Severus is a very private person, Hermione."  
  
Hermione's face fell. This was not the disclosure she had expected, not the apocrypha she had wanted to hear: she did not want to be defeated, not when Minerva seemed so close to the brink of telling.  
  
Minerva sighed tiredly, as if the same old song had just come on the radio. "You are too curious for your own good. Or mine. Very well: there is quite a tale behind it. The Bludger got away from Severus and he lost control over it. His injuries, including a broken nose, kept him from being able to play again. He might have been killed had another player not pulled it off him."  
  
"You don't mean - James Potter, do you?" There was real horror in Hermione's eyes on her predecessor's behalf. The humiliation .  
  
"Oh, no: Preston Wood. Severus would rather have died than let James help him again. He could never get over having to be rescued - especially by James, a Gryffindor. He never again let Quidditch become so central."  
  
"In the woods, with the Whomping Willow," she whispered, remembering.  
  
"And you're too smart, too." Minerva stood up and started to shoo Hermione out. "Severus learned more about sacrifice and honor in those woods than any of the Slytherins you know ever will, and that's why Severus hated him. And now you know, Miss Granger. Go to bed."  
  
Hermione smiled her thanks and exited out into the corridor, heading straight for her rooms. Had she bothered to turn around, though, Hermione might have seen a handsome green-eyed cat trotting toward the private quarters of one Albus Dumbledore.  
  
It was nearly two in the morning - Hermione groaned as she checked her Muggle watch, a contraband gift from the past. She had not spent a stormy night alone in as long as she could remember: the cracking thunder and flashes of romantic illumination had once been an irresistible excuse to make love. Now, alone in her bed, she was simply being kept awake. Finally fed up, she kicked off her covers and pulled her kimono over her nightdress.  
  
The halls of Hogwarts once again found the frightening size they had lost as she had grown up, now that she was alone in the darkness of night. A few years ago, wandering the corridors at such an hour would have meant excitement: she, Harry, and Ron would have been together on some adventure. Now she wondered if they would ever be able to spend time alone in the same room again. And it was all her fault.  
  
Hermione thoughts soon led her to the library, seeking their solitude and solace: there was sure to be some comfort in the solitude there. She had expected most extreme isolation, yet in the reading chairs by the windows sat a dark figure.  
  
Forgetting all decorum, Hermione gasped, "What are you doing here?"  
  
"Mustn't let the lightening go to waste," Severus said, lingering on that second to last consonant. "Miss Granger."  
  
I'm a Griffindor: I must be brave, she told herself, hearing Minerva's voice in her head, and sat down in the chair opposite him. "You know," she said, with forced straight tone and cheek. "If you're going to be working on this with me, you should get used to calling me by my first name."  
  
"Working on what?" he snapped.  
  
"The pig's toe," she said, trying to keep the edge of annoyance mingled with fear from her voice, given who she was speaking to.  
  
"I absolutely am not."  
  
That was abrupt, even for him. A bit stunned, Hermione sat in silence. She tried to calm herself down, and, as she sat there, she could smell a particularly rich scent of coffee rising from his direction. In a powerful flash of lightening she could see a cup sitting on the table at his side. "You're not nearly as frightening as you used to be."  
  
"I'm not ..?" he said, softly. Was there a hint of amusement in that tone?  
  
"You're really somewhat . human. I talked to Minerva today. She told me about you and your house Quidditch team."  
  
"Oh, that," he said, as dismissively, she thought, as humanly possible. He looked back down at his book, his mood shifted again to black.  
  
"Why don't you ever talk about playing?" Oh, Hermione, will you ever learn not to cross that proverbial line?  
  
"Do I ever talk about anything?" he snarled. "Why don't you talk about being married to Harry Potter?"  
  
Touché. This time, however, Hermione didn't allow his verbal thrust to get to her.  
  
"It's somewhat an unpleasant thing for me, at present," she said, knowing full well what he was pushing for. "But it wasn't always so bad: we were very happy for a long time. I bet things weren't always so bad for you, either," she pressed. "Certainly not so you can't think about them ever again."  
  
She leaned a bit towards him, trying to see if he had reacted at all. In the darkness of the library, she couldn't see much, but it certainly seemed that he had not. She listened to the thunderclaps in silence, waiting for him to say something. Anything.  
  
"There is nothing you need to know of my past, Professor Potter." He spoke so softly she was not sure he had spoken at all. "And nothing of my present, or future. I bid you goodnight." He rose then, and swept from the room, his robes the only sound in the silent library.  
  
No matter what her all too natural fear demanded, she wanted to call after him, this other human being, to beg him to stay with her in the stormy darkness, to share her solitude, but she found that her voice would not obey. And so Hermione was pitifully alone yet again that night.  
  
After an excruciatingly sleepless night, Hermione found her way into the Great Hall for breakfast. She was exhausted, but sleep seemed remarkably not tempting. She asked one of the house-elves for a cup of coffee on her way to the head table - they automatically brought tea to everyone. As she dragged herself to her seat, she saw Dumbledore and Snape talking rapidly and quietly, standing behind the chairs. Snape was shaking his head, the sleeves of his robes flapping like wings with the gesturing of his hands. It seemed that Dumbledore won in the end, however, because, grudgingly, Snape at last nodded.  
  
And then he walked toward her. HermioneHerm realized she had been staring, too tired to stop herself, but facing Severus Snape snapped her out of whatever reverie she had been in. "Miss Granger," he said, in his silky voice. It was obviously an effort for him to be as civil as he was. "Will you join me?"  
  
This sudden courtesy, despite its insincerity, was yet another shock to Hermione. She nodded in stunned silence and sat in Flitwick's place beside his. He pulled out the chair for her - that much did not seem forced - and sat himself, arranging his billowing robes around him.  
  
"How is the research?" he asked, not looking at her. He was trying to avoid anyone noticing who he was talking to, she realized.  
  
"What research?"  
  
"The cornstarch, professor. What on earth else would I be talking about?" he snapped. There was more than annoyance in his voice: he seemed genuinely angry with whomever had sent him over.  
  
"Oh," she said, trying to remember if she had started working with it. "I haven't gotten to it yet."  
  
He glared at her now, malice glittering in his black eyes. "I would have hoped you were happier to have something as obscure as Muggle spices. That you would have, at least, begun your work."  
  
Dumbledore leaned over to look at them, listening to the conversation. Was it possible he was forcing Snape to talk to her?  
  
"I am happy. I've just had - other things on my mind lately," Hermione managed.  
  
She very much expected an angry comment like "Potter," but he said nothing. In fact, he said nothing the rest of the meal, and disappeared immediately afterwards in a cloud of black robes. Later that evening, all Hermione would be able to tell Minerva was that it had been the strangest conversation she had ever had - and for someone with a past like Hermione Granger's, that was saying a lot. 


	5. Dawn

Dawn  
  
Hermione had not spoken to Professor Snape in several days, not since the breakfast conversation about cornstarch. She was glad, too, because it had left her feeling remarkably odd, as if she had just read only the middle chapter of a book. But she had at last begun to play around with the powders, and she had high hopes for the compound.  
  
She had realized that her best chance would be to consult a wizard more experienced with potions than she was, which meant she would have to find him. She had last period off, but as luck would have it, he did not. She wandered down into the dungeon, where he had kept his own office though Potions had moved.  
  
"I believe it is customary to knock before entering, Miss Granger," he said without looking up. "But as you are already in, sit down."  
  
The class consisted of Ravenclaws and Slytherins, who were, of course, sniggering at Severus' comment against her. Obviously, they enjoyed his cruelty as much as he did. She found a chair in the back of the room and tried to pretend she was not there. It felt too much like her own school days for comfort.  
  
"As we discussed yesterday," Severus said, abruptly. His voice was soft but deadly, and the entire class went silent. He hadn't even looked up from whatever he was writing, but each student was staring straight at him, waiting to hear what he had to say. "Death Eaters are the followers of Voldemort. Mr. Palmer, name two unique qualities of the Death Eaters."  
  
"They bear the Dark Mark," the boy mumbled, uncertainly. "And they . they . I don't know, sir," he finally said to his parchment.  
  
"I see," he growled. "One point from Ravenclaw. Miss Haverflash?"  
  
"They are entirely subject to the will of their lord," she said, with a little too much relish. Hermione was shocked that Severus was able to speak so frankly about a topic so close to home: he himself had once been one of them.  
  
"Excellent," Severus said, nodding. "Death Eaters are indeed forced to obey their master, there is no question. When they walked free, Voldemort was able to call them to him though the Dark Mark that each of them bears still today."  
  
"Are they able to administer the Kiss of Death?" Watching Severus pace before the blackboard, Hemrione had not seen who had asked the question.  
  
"No, you dim-witted boy," he snarled, as if the question was a personal insult. Severus had stopped his pacing. "I should take points from your house simply for your stupidity. Never mistake Death Eaters for Dementors."  
  
"What is the Kiss?" asked a Ravenclaw.  
  
"The Kiss of Death," Severus pronounced, his voice a bit louder than usual. "Is the final act performed by a Dementor upon a prisoner, in which the soul is slowly sucked from the body. The Dementor places its foul lips on its prisoner, and draws forth the trembling spirit in the purest form, leaving the body behind, its face more often than nor twisted with sheer horror and the deepest pain imaginable. The Kiss is worse than death, for the soul is forever forfeit. As the soul is drawn out, slowly, by the mouth of the Dementor, the victim writhes like a ring of smoke moved by a breath, and then is eternally still, though his breathing may be heard for seconds afterward, ragged and raw. It is more painful than Crucio, more deadly than Avada Kedavra, and I have seen it done."  
  
Severus' eyes were distant, as if he had stopped teaching and was, for an instant, actually watching the Kiss be administered. Hermione felt she needed a shower: not for the actual image of death he had created, but for the image she had seen in her mind of quite a different experience. Something in the roughness of Severus' voice, the way he described the Kiss, had been disturbingly arousing, and Hermione had to cover her eyes with her hands to get the images of writhing bodies out of her mind.  
  
This is Snape, she screamed inside her mind. And he is describing the deaths of thousands of prisoners - deaths he has watched, even helped along .  
  
The echo of his voice was pierced by that of one Emilia King. "Why would anyone join them, if that's their fate?"  
  
"Voldemort," Snape answered quickly, as if he had already heard the question in his mind before she had asked it. "Offers much. He offers the deepest desire of your heart, and for many this promise is enough."  
  
The classroom was silent: even the Slytherins had stopped whispering among themselves to stare at the professor, who had barely moved since he had finished speaking. What Hermione could not help but notice, however, was that his eyes had settled upon her. The air in the classroom was suddenly stifling, threatening to choke her with embarrassment. She fought a shiver and decided her request could wait until dinner, and slipped out the door and into the cool, calming air of the Hogwarts dungeons.  
  
It was there that she stood and tried to calm herself, pressing the backs of her hands to her cheeks. She heard the class begin to talk amongst themselves again: she had time to think that she ought to get going before a dark shadow emerged from the classroom.  
  
"Professor," Snape said, in his characteristic soft voice. "A word." She turned around to face at him and knew her cheeks had suddenly gotten quite pink again. He was not looking at her, and his hands were twitching, well, nervously. "I am . sorry if I have offended you. I have seen much Dark Magic --"  
  
"You didn't offend me, Severus," she interrupted, noticing only after she had said it that she had used his given name. She hesitated a moment, wondering if he had noticed, too, but he seemed not to, or at least not to mind. "I guess I just wasn't feeling well enough."  
  
He nodded, and swept back into his classroom.  
  
How odd.  
  
Hermione walked back to her office in silence, thinking about what she had just seen and heard. And felt. Severus Snape's words had stirred feelings in her she had not felt since her divorce - both because she lacked the two men she had ever loved, and because she had pushed away any inclination to avoid a relapse. Yet there she had been, listening to - to a former teacher, a colleague, with her mind wandering to places it had no place going.  
  
Not only that, but he had actually followed her out to the corridor to apologize: to actually apologize, not just "pay a debt." This was very nearly too much to take in. She walked toward her office, dodging children on their way back to their houses before dinner, ignoring the noise of the hallway as she tried to get her mind around what had just happened.  
  
"Minerva," she said, coming out of her daze at the sight of her friend and mentor. "The strangest thing just happened to me."  
  
Minerva seemed remarkably nonplussed. Bored, almost. She shrugged, and said, "Mr. Boyd has been returned to his original form, and everything he ate is being tended to by Professor Sprout --"  
  
Hermione shook her head vehemently. "Severus just apologized to me. I sat in on his class, but I had to leave early. He thought he had offended me, somehow, and he followed me and apologized," she said, the words spilling out too quickly.  
  
Now, Minerva looked interested, even confused. "But Albus hasn't spoken to him in over week."  
  
"What does Professor Dumbledore have to do with this?"  
  
"It was he who suggested Severus speak to you after he . made you cry."  
  
"He didn't make me cry," Hemrione argued, rather unconvincingly.  
  
"But Severus did this entirely on his own," Minerva continued. "How exceedingly strange. That's not like him. Oh, he's a good man, Hermione, don't think otherwise," she said, seeing Hermione's expression. "But if you will excuse me."  
  
Without waiting for an answer, she swept away, her emerald green robes flowing behind her, revealing a long plaid skirt. Too many strange things were happening, including Minerva's behavior, and Hermione helped herself to two Muggle aspirins as soon as she got to her office.  
  
She sat in her office, then, fiddling with the pig's toe and cornstarch. She had worked it out first mathematically, doing the calculations over and over on paper and in her head. She had tried in a small scale, but not with enough powder to determine if it was effective. Really, she was waiting impatiently for dinner, so she could ask Severus to go over her calculations with her: despite his odd behavior of late, he was the only person she trusted to check her work. As she sat, quietly playing with the powders in her pestle, she heard the hooting of an owl.  
  
Above her, swooping in the open window, was Hedwig. She would have recognized that owl anywhere from the many years they had lived together. "Harry?" she whispered, choking on the word. She felt tears pricking at her eyes with the sudden thought of him.  
  
Hedwig settled on Hermione's desk, hooting happily. She nipped her finger affectionately: Hermione wondered if Harry had explained why she wasn't coming home. As she opened the letter tied to Hedwig's leg, she found it was written in Harry's handwriting, which made Hermione wipe away tears. The stationary was one she had given him for Christmas several years ago, cream colored with 'HP' watermarked in one corner.  
  
Setting the letter aside so as to delay the moment, the moment she read his words, heard tem in her mind. She gave Hedwig a treat, hoping she would stay for a little while. It was dated that morning, Friday the third. He had addressed it with her full name, Hermione, instead of the nickname he usually used for her. That alone drew a little sob from her. She ran her fingers over the words as she read them, feeling the grooves of his favorite quill: she recognized the heaviness he wrote with when he used it.  
  
"The Ministry is having trouble determining your assets, since nearly all of what you own isn't magical. They asked me to have you come and help figure it out as soon as possible. I told them it was the school year, but they insisted I write. I hope you are well. Take care and see you soon, I suppose. Harry."  
  
Not even a closing pleasantry. Hermione supposed she could leave for a weekend without being missed too much: she would speak to Dumbledore that night. For now, however, she locked her door, put her head down on her desk, and let herself cry until dinner.  
  
A few hours and several redness removing charms later, Hermione went down to dinner. She was late: even Severus was there already. She snuck over to him and crouched behind his chair. "Professor?"  
  
"Why on earth are you sneaking about, Miss Granger?" he barked, without looking at her.  
  
Her first impulse was to run away. He still frightened her, no matter what she tried to tell herself, and she was embarrassed by her thoughts of earlier. "I need your help," she muttered. And then she forced herself to say his given name. "Severus, please."  
  
He set down his flatware with an audible clink and turned to look at her. "What do you want, Professor?"  
  
"Check my calculations. I think I've figured it out." She hoped he knew what she meant.  
  
There was a long pause before he manages to force an answer past his lips. Even then, his words came out in a rush, a snap flood. "Your office, tonight, eight o'clock. Now sit down."  
  
He arrived at her office at an alarmingly punctual eight o'clock, with his wand in his hand and a scowl on his face. "If I am to be subject to your demands," he growled. "I request we do this someplace with better coffee."  
  
Too (pleasantly) surprised to argue, she allowed him to apparate them both to the pub in Hogsmead. She had not been here since graduation, with Harry and Ron, for one last Butterbeer before the Hogwarts Express took them back to London and reality. The floor was sticky and the air thick with ale - just as she remembered. There was a wizard leaning against the bar, talking to a witch in red robes and too much eye makeup, and a group of witches at one booth who were talking and laughing far too loudly. She could smell the scent of coffee making its way though the smoky barroom.  
  
Severus stormed over to an empty table in the corner - it seemed to have been waiting for him. People scattered from his path as he moved. She would have, too: he was an intimidating figure in black, like the angel of death on a firstborn, still brandishing his wand and holding it a little too tightly. She realized that he was waiting impatiently for her beside the table, and she walked up to meet him. No-one got out of her way, however: she must have looked as submissive as she felt.  
  
Severus pulled out the chair for her and tucked it beneath her as she sat. She couldn't remember the last time a man had done that for her. He ordered for her, too: a raspberry cappuccino, which made her wonder how he knew that was what she wanted.  
  
"The coffee here is bearable, unlike that at Hogwarts," he said, more to himself, she felt, than to her. While the waitress was gone, she pulled out the cards she had in her pocket. They contained the ratio of cornstarch to pig's toe, as well as all her work. "I'm not going over them," he snapped, without looking at her. "The correct ratio is 4:5:1. Anything else is far too volatile to be of use."  
  
"The correct ratio is 3:5:1. It's far more effective. If you would look at what I've done --"  
  
"That high a concentration could kill you, professor." Severus was mildly annoyed with her. She had kept him from a peaceful evening alone at his usual table here, and now she wasn't even going to accept the advice she claimed to want so desperately. "You are just like every other Muggle born I have ever met," he snarled, with rare unchecked feeling. "And what's worse, you're a Gryffindor. People like you never listen. I knew a girl like you once, who never knew what was good for her: a Potter from the day we were sorted."  
  
"Potter?" Hermione sputtered, though he obviously wasn't about to stop.  
  
"All you Muggle born are the same, headstrong fools," he continued, banging the table with the palm of his hand. "never stopping to consider the consequences of your actions." He leaned back in his chair and took a long sip of the coffee the waitress had just brought him. Hermione was sitting, her lips parted in shock, her hot coffee burning her fingers unnoticed.  
  
"Shut you mouth, you silly girl --"  
  
"Why do you have to be so mean all the time?" she demanded suddenly, her voice far louder than she had intended.  
  
"I would call myself many despicable things, professor, but mean would not be among them." His voice was far calmer now, and soft, almost as if his rail against the Muggle born had not happened.  
  
"You are so!" Hermione continued, sounding very much like a little girl, even to her own ears. "Don't you remember how you treated Harry?"  
  
"I do not recall ever being mean to that disruptive, cheeky, attention seeker."  
  
She should have defended him, but she somehow didn't feel up to it. "Or me? Don't you remember making fun of my teeth?"  
  
"You deserved it." There it was again - that hint of amusement.  
  
"So you do remember!"  
  
His black eyes glittered behind his curtain of hair. "I'm still not going over your calculations."  
  
Hermione was furious. She had not raised her voice to anyone in years, but her temper got the best of her. "What is it you want to hear?" she shrieked. No-one so much as looked up: even Severus seemed unsurprised by her outburst. "That I got married to feel accepted, and cheated on my husband to feel wanted? That I never should have pretended I felt more than friendship for either of them? That I fucked up, and now I've lost my two best friends, and torn them apart from each other as well? That I ran away to Hogwarts to escape what I had done? Is that what you want?"  
  
She leaned over the table, her hair falling into her eyes and blowing as her breath came in gasps, winded from such an emotional outburst.  
  
Severus' fit of sadism had passed, drained away like a hot bath. The fury in Hermione's eyes has roused him in the strangest way: he even felt . sorry for her. How odd.  
  
"We will try the potion your way this evening. I myself have been trying to uncover a more stable way to apparate, one that could be used by everyone. I have always preferred the subtle science and exact art of potions to spells and wands."  
  
She was still panting, half of rage and half of astonishment. Had he just agreed to do what she wanted? More than she wanted? She took a deep breath and a sip of coffee, never once dropping his gaze. "The real beauty is the simmering cauldron and its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins."  
  
"Indeed, Hermione." He had used her given name only once before. It felt strange to say, sounded strange with his voice, like an invasion of carefully protected privacy, but not unwelcome. He liked saying it, he thought, before he could stop himself. He was still leaning back in the chair, knees apart. He could smell her perfume, stale in this late evening: it was a Muggle scent he had only ever smelled on her. "You paid attention in my classes."  
  
"I memorized my notes."  
  
He looked at her for a long time, not saying a word. Unbidden, the thought came to him that she had gotten pretty since she had left her days as a student. "There is a power to the creation of potions," he said, idly swirling the dregs of his coffee in the cup. He leaned on the last consonants of his words, lingering too long as if top make them last. "The ability to enchant, to entangle human minds; to bend and remold, to blend, to witness the merging of two benign fluids as they become one, powerful potion that can alter the world, the changing of two colors into a third ."  
  
Severus' words had moved something within her, like his words earlier that day, creating an image in her mind she would have blocked out. She felt herself drawn to him in a way she couldn't explain, didn't want to be. And yet as he spoke, she could feel the power he possessed, the sheer brilliance of the man before her.  
  
She realized belatedly that he had locked his eyes into hers once again as he spoke. They glittered without the malevolence she had always seen there, but something else, something she didn't recognize. Their gaze was broken at long last by the return of the waitress, who poured Severus another cup. Avoiding his eyes, Hermione watched the steam twist to the ceiling. She saw him sip at it, thought it must have been too hot. He had barely touched it before he muttered:  
  
"Tonight, in your office, where we can be alone and unobserved, we will try your new potion, Miss Granger."  
  
"Hermione," she corrected.  
  
"Hermione," he parroted, low in his rich register, almost ferally, as he reached for the bill on the table and drew out a few Galleons from his robes to pay for it.  
  
"I am perfectly capable," Hermione snapped, snatching the parchment from him. "I do not rely on anyone to support me, thank you."  
  
She pulled out her purse and sorted through for her Galleons among the Muggle coins and bills she had stuffed into it. As she did so, it occurred to her just where it was she would be apparating to tonight. 


	6. First Light

First Light  
  
It was nearly midnight, pitch black in her office. Hermione was seated on the edge of her desk, swinging her legs with anticipation: she hated the dark, but he had insisted. Severus had returned to his rooms to change his robes before they left for London. He had been curt in telling her where he was going and had swept down the corridor without a further word. She'd instructed her portrait-doorguard to let him in, so he couldn't be held up outside. Hermione wasn't entirely convinced he was coming back at all: he had not seemed anxious to help her out.  
  
He had been gone for quite some time. She was actually getting a little worried: what if he wasn't coming back? She would have to apparate herself to London alone and track Severus down some other time. Then again, maybe he didn't want to help her at all. He had said that the concentrations she was using could be lethal: perhaps he wanted her to get hurt, to punish her for marrying Harry Potter .  
  
He pushed the door open and stalked over to her desk, glaring at her, his wand illuminating the darkness around his stern, pale face. "Very well - I'm here."  
  
She slid off the desk; her sapphire robes caught and pulled up to her knees, and she had to smooth them back down. She was wearing navy stockings to match, he saw in the instant her calves were exposed. Not that he'd been looking.  
  
Oh thank God, she thought as she got down from the desk, relieved he had shown up at all. Severus' expression had changed, somehow, though she couldn't seem to place it. He was rolling his wand between his fingers as if he expected to use it at any moment. It was funny that he had changed his robes, but they were the same flowing, vampiric black, dragging on the floor behind him. "Well, here it is. Lumos," she whispered to her own wand as she gestured at the desk. On her desk was a marble mortar filled with ground pig's toe, a small phial filled with monk's hood, and the bundle he had given her. She looked at him and took a deep breath. "Here we go."  
  
Severus nodded and poured out some of the phial into the palm of his hand. He added a pinch out of the bundle. Hermione was watching an expert in potion making at work, she realized: he wasn't even measuring the quantities. She appreciated the experience more now than she ever would have been able to while in school.  
  
"It is the magical power of the maker that gives a potion life," he said, very softly. She felt, suddenly, like she was back in class, being given private instruction. It was, however, an experience she never would have had as a student. He had hated her then, and she was sure he did still. Only now he had to help her, in the name of their work. She could feel his passion for what he was doing radiating off of him like a light. "Your own force powers the transaction."  
  
He added the pig's toe, its acrid, deathly scent filling the close air between the two of them. She was standing very near, though she didn't remember making it so. He was using the concentrations she had specified and not his own: either he trusted her calculations or he believed himself powerful enough to control whatever bad turn she had created for them. He closed his long fingers around the compound, the white and green blending in the quiet glow of her wand - he had insisted they make as little fuss as possible to avoid Filch and Mrs. Norris.  
  
"Diagon Alley," Severus whispered, as he released the powder into the air and scattered it over both of them. The compound became blue as it floated and fell: for an instant she was afraid it hadn't worked, as they remained in her office. Then the dark room began to shimmer and swirl like the heat over a grill; Severus' face shifted and churned; he met her eyes just before everything went dark.  
  
She opened her eyes and released a breath she had not realized she had been holding. The darkness had exploded into brightness and cleared to reveal a bright amaranthine blue: there was no ceiling and no floor, though they were very obviously standing on something.  
  
"This is a different realm. I recognize it from the descriptions in Magical Realms and Half-Realms. I read it second year. The only person to escape from a half-realm was Marcus Mobius, in ." Her voice raised in register to a panic as the gravity of their situation filled her; her knees gave out beneath her and she could feel the ground rushing up to meet her, even if she couldn't see it -  
  
A powerful hand caught her lower back, keeping her from hitting the ground. A second hand pressed into her shoulders and righted her, as she laid a hand on a strong chest: Severus Snape was holding her protectively against him, releasing her the instant her eyes fluttered open. The look of concern she had seen in his pale face months ago came back, but she didn't much mind just now. He filled her with his unique, strange scent, even in that infinitely short moment. She wished she had let him hold her, and was entirely, if inexplicably, sure he would have.  
  
"I'm fine," she said. "Really."  
  
Severus released his hold on her, looking very much put off. Or, that would have been her thought, had he not been who he was. "This is precisely what I had feared: we are trapped in a half-realm, as you said. The combination you suggested has proven a disaster." He sounded uncharacteristically unconfident, curling his robes around himself, hiding his arms, which were crossed over his chest. He scowled at the blue all around them, turning away from her.  
  
"You do know how to get out, don't you?"  
  
"Don't you?" He spoke in his most dangerous voice, laced with deadly sarcasm. "You're the academic."  
  
"So are you!" she hissed, with a heavy sigh. "It's been so long since I read anything about it ."  
  
He looked around the space, this cerulean cage. Suddenly, he was holding his wand, and it seemed there was a spell on his lips already. More loudly than she had ever heard him, he called, "Apperiatur."  
  
A yellow lightening bolt shot from the tip of his wand into the blue abyss. It snaked along the distance surface; golden tendrils of light; fiery energy that crackled like a campfire. It seemed to converge on a point somewhere in the distance, and shift to an unbelievably radiant cobalt. The spell came echoing back to him, spreading malevolently along the azure walls of their enclosure: it burst upon him like a wild animal, forcing Severus to take a step back. His black robes trembled violently, terrifyingly, like the wings of an enormous bat flapping in the unnaturally blue sky, and a painful breath of fear gripped her. She wasn't sure if she was more afraid of being without him or being alone: it was more a nameless terror, that quiet dread that slept beneath the windows of her isolated rooms, than a fear. She had neither words nor voice to scream, her lips parted in a silent expression of horror.  
  
He stopped, swept his black hair back from his face with all four fingers, and looked at her. There were tiny burns up and down his hands and a gash at his left temple where the spell had backfired upon him, a trickle of scarlet dripping down his cheek to his black robes like a river of burgundy wine. His fingers touched the tiny rivulet flowing from his hairline and pulled away so he could see the crimson stain there. He looked back at her. "Well, that didn't work."  
  
She pressed the flats of her fingers to her cheek, a relieved smile overtaking the corner of her mouth. The azure space framed his black figure, the only other thing in the half-realm they were sharing. Stunned, Hermione whispered the only words that came to mind: "Severus, you're bleeding."  
  
"Good of you to notice. Ignum reparo," he muttered at his wand, touching it to a lesion along the fleshy part of his thumb. It did nothing. "Reparo, Reparo!" he hissed, his blazing temper flaring. She had never seen him so openly . irate.  
  
"Let me try it." She forced him to giver her his hand and she performed the same spell, this time healing the red wound. His touch made her exhale sharply, though she did her best to make it sound like frustration. It didn't even convince her. "I take it spells was not your favorite class."  
  
"I attended Hogwarts when Professor Willoughby was still there. It was dull as tombs."  
  
Had they been anywhere but a half-realm she would have laughed at that. His fingers were still resting on hers though each angry red burn was healed. His hands were icy cold, preternaturally long, elegant and powerful. A humid scent clung to him, the smell of the dungeons he taught and lived in. It was bitter and earthy, like clay, and a bit of magical fluids she recognized from her own collection. "I would have preferred to use an ointment of some sort, of course, but..."  
  
"I don't think we'll find any mandrake here, Miss Granger."  
  
"Indeed not." She turned her attention to the cut on his temple. "Potions are so much more reliable . well, usually."  
  
"I have always felt so." He was speaking slowly again, with the precision typical of his speech. He must have calmed down a bit, she thought. "I feel sure your idea could have worked in the proper concentrations. How unfortunate the ingredients remain at Hogwarts and we here," he grumbled. He was drawing her into his fencing match again, trying to extract out of her what he wanted to know.  
  
It was working. "I didn't mean to get stuck here with you, Severus. It was absolutely not my desire. Anyway, if you were so sure my ratio would fail, why did you use it?"  
  
"I listened to a Muggle-born," he snapped. His words were a knife, and the wound they left stung and dripped red.  
  
"What, exactly, makes you so far superior to me? Your mother and father were both Slytherins, and their parents before them." There was disbelief in his black eyes: his hair had once again fallen over them but she could see the glitter of surprise. "I read about it, Severus. That's what I do. Is that it? Is that what makes you so wonderful, that you're a pure-blood wizard, like Draco Malfoy? What's so wonderful about people like the Malfoys?"  
  
"In my day, Professor Potter," he said softly, in his silkiest, deadliest voice. "In my day, Slytherin lived up to our boasts."  
  
"I don't give a damn if Salazar Slytherin was one of the Apostles, Severus. And why do you only call me Potter when you're vexed with me? You were calling me Hermione an hour ago."  
  
"You only vex me when you act like a Potter!"  
  
"This is getting us nowhere," she said, quietly, looking away from him. He fell silent for a moment. She would have given anything to know what was running through his mind. "We are stuck, we don't have my powders, nothing to make any potions at all."  
  
"We must rely on intellect, then."  
  
She nodded, still not looking at him. Had she, she would have seen a smile creeping onto Severus Snape's face, contorting the corner of his mouth as he fought it off. She has a temper, this one. She stood up to him: she would have hit him if her conscience had let her, he was sure of it. Perhaps it was that dark auburn hair of hers - or perhaps her hair had turned auburn to match her temper. He certainly didn't remember it that shade before. Then again, she had never been allowed such stunningly blue robes before. The heat of her sheer rancor had lifted the remnants of that Muggle perfume she wore but never remembered to reapply: a spicy blend that reminded him of lotus flowers or tea blossoms. "Translatio."  
  
He muttered the spell and flicked his wand so subtly that Hermione was amazed at the power that emanated from it: the entire space, all that brilliant blue, was suddenly a blinding yellow, the color of the sun rather than the sky. She shielded her eyes with the sapphire sleeve of her robe. She was almost forced to tears by the dazzling yellow that surrounded her, making her forget where she was and dragging a scream from her lungs, though it was minutes, she was sure, before she realized whose voice it was.  
  
Harry, was all she could think, by habit, but it was another she meant. "Severus?" she managed at last. The glare of the spell had dissipated, though it was still a bright shade. He was lying on the floor, for lack of a better word, in a black heap. She knelt and pulled his sleeves off his face: he still breathed, thank God, though he did not seem conscious. "Aurora," she said, the wakening spell. His eyes opened, glassy, uncomprehending.  
  
"Lily."  
  
"Oh, professor," she whispered, just happy to hear his voice: as long as he was conscious, she had a chance at reviving him. "Come on, up you get --"  
  
"Lily," he said again. This time she caught the word. He was looking right at her, yet through her somehow. "Lily, they told me you were dead, they said the Dark Lord ."  
  
Lily Potter. He thought she was Lily Potter. She herself had noticed the similarity of their appearances, but she had thought it was the similarity of hair color and the position they were standing in - obviously, Severus saw more to it than that.  
  
Were there tears in his eyes? She was sure the brightness of the sudden shift had caused them - but perhaps not. He sat up, nearly crashing into her, and his voice trembled a bit as he went on: "The Dark Lord, he said that . that you had defied him, you were not worthy of one of his Death Eaters . but you were the reason I took it . See?"  
  
He pulled up the left sleeve of his robe to reveal a pale white arm, and on that arm, at the inside of his elbow, was a black image, one that she recognized - the Dark Mark. It resembled a Muggle tattoo - perhaps that was how Voldemort applied it - but was deeper, more permanent. In fact, it rather resembled a birthmark, but the strangest one she had ever seen.  
  
"I did it for you, and I ... I never thought I'd see you again." So that was why he was babbling so. "Lord Voldemort is kind . but he is too late. I . told everything to Dumbledore . but for you . I could be persuaded . Lily ."  
  
Severus gripped Hermione's forearms, knocking her violently backwards and out of confused shock into terror. His hands were strong, holding her. She couldn't break loose, and he was hurting her . His fingertips were digging into her flesh as he said the dead woman's name over and over again, looking down at his lap as he held her there.  
  
"He promised you to me, do you know that? But when he killed you, I never thought I'd see you again . I left him. I had nothing to stay for. Lily . you died for that boy, James Potter's son . Why? Why for his . Oh, Lily, I died for you, and I would again ."  
  
Severus stopped then. His insane babbling, more words than she could ever remember hearing from him, floated around in her mind, pieces of a puzzle too overpowering to put together. He was silent, his black hair completely covering his face. She didn't want to believe he was crying, not Severus, not Professor Snape, the dark teacher who had terrified her as a child, who had been so wise, so . strong. She didn't want to believe it, so she sat, his fingers still holding her arms, hurting so much she wanted to cry, too, and tried to ignore the sobs that racked his body.  
  
At last he seemed to stop, because he let go of her and covered his face with his hands. She wanted to touch him, to hold him - like a crying child - but he was too far-gone. Whatever spell it had been he had used had backfired upon him. Not physically, like the first one, but mentally, and he believed she was Lily Potter and was willing to turn back to the Dark if it meant . It was too much to take in. Hermione needed to numb her mind, to fill it so full with work that there was no more room for any other thought. And it just so happened that there was much work to be done.  
  
Hermione stood up, leaving him where he was. She drew out her wand and wished, not for the last time, that he were able to handle this. His wand was sure to be more powerful, once he was using the right spell. As it was, hers felt so much lighter than she remembered, too springy, too . feminine. She considered, just for an instant, getting his, but knew that would be disastrous. One can't use another wizard's wand, and his was probably fried anyway. Her arms and wrists hurt from where Severus had clasped them; they would be bruised up and down tomorrow, if ever she lived that long.  
  
She missed the parents she had barely spoken to in years; she missed the husband she had left less than a year ago; she missed the best friend she allowed too much freedom; and she missed the man sitting beside her. He hadn't moved at all: that alone was terrifying.  
  
She looked around her: the half-realm was now a color she would have called neon in the Muggle world. It hurt her eyes to open them, but she gazed around the wall-less cage they were in, forcing herself to look. There seemed to be no beginning nor end, no top nor bottom, save the solidity supporting them. Well, that raised an interesting question: what were they standing on? She got down on her knees, now completely ignoring Severus, and put her hand on it. There was no temperature difference at all, like solid air.  
  
Solid air. Was that possible? Not in Muggle sciences, no, but this was a wizarding realm, andit was possible - possible - that there was a spell to solidify air. No - this was nothing like that, she realized: stasis. It was a stasis charm, nothing more. They had been caught by an imperfect potion in a realm wrapped up in a stasis spell. She saw it all with perfect clarity, like the first time she had cast a spell, all those years ago at her home in Surrey. So much sense .  
  
So she needed to undo the stasis charm. Easy enough. Or, it would have been, had she had a few of her books with her. She hadn't performed spells in a long time, choosing to rely on her talent with potions when she did her magic, which wasn't very often. She wished she could have asked Severus, but he was still curled up into himself, his hands over his face. She wished he could have done anything at all, even just talked to her. She wanted desperately to hear his voice again, sounding like himself.  
  
"Lily," he muttered. Severus was rocking now, only slightly, and had the rest of the world contained more than him she would not have noticed. She turned her mind away from him and back to her work.  
  
Logic, she knew, was her only chance. It was also, by some lucky coincidence, what she was best at. She summoned Severus' voice in her head - the real Severus, not the shivering heap that was here. Start by elimination, she could hear him say. Eliminate the spells he had used that had not work, perhaps decide why they hadn't.  
  
Apperiatur, the opening spell, had been first to fail, because there was nothing to open, but it had left him burnt and cut . opened. Translatio, the change of location spell, had failed because this was the only location there was to go to. And now Severus had been translated to a place where Lily was still alive.  
  
Whatever spell she cast to get them out of there could not be cast on the half-realm itself, because that would only backfire upon her. So . the spell she used needed to be on herself, and Severus, in order to part the sea of yellow they were swimming in.  
  
That was it. Animatus, the stimulation charm.  
  
Severus' eyes fluttered open. He could see that he was in the hospital wing of Hogwarts. Madame Pomfrey was standing beside his bed, but she wasn't working on him: Hermione Granger was seated in a chair, her robes pulled up to her upper arms. There were bruises up to her elbows, sickly green and yellow bruises with purple centers that very much resembled fingerprints. Her face was turned away from him so he could see her only in profile, her hair curling in auburn waves over her bright blue robes. He let himself watch her for several seconds, a large part of him wishing to be able to watch her like this forever.  
  
She turned to look at him, then, as Madame Pomfrey continued to heal her bruises. "Severus?" she whispered, disbelieving. She pulled away from the healing touch to lean beside him, stumbling a bit as she did so. She looked as if she were struggling for words, but settled on saying his name again. Her hand found his and slid up his cold skin to rest inside his elbow, where the Mark was. Her skin was rough from overexposure to chemicals, and harsh on that bit of skin he rarely allowed into public. He should have refused to allow her near it, so dirty as it was, but just then he forgot entirely the Dark Mark that set him apart from her. Now he let her touch him, thankful, just thankful for human contact.  
  
"Did Translatio work?" he asked. Doesn't he remember? she wondered.  
  
"No," she said, considering how much to tell him. "It didn't. It backfired on you and you sort of . lost it. You were talking about Lily Potter." The words came spilling out before she could do anything about it, glad that Madame Pomfrey had left.  
  
"Did I ." He didn't need to finish.  
  
"It seemed that you . turned to Voldemort because he promised her to you, and then turned away when he . ah . broke his promise," she whispered, very quietly. "Is that it?"  
  
"Basically, yes," he said dryly. He turned his face away to stare at the wall. The hospital wing always smelled the same way: powerful antiseptic, heavy mandrake, and sundry potions, several of which he had developed over the years. The sheets smelled the same as all the other bed sheets in Hogwarts, as they were all washed by the house-elves in the same tubs. It was a soapy smell, obsessively clean, and softened with a particular charm designed to leave no scent. For a moment, he could almost pretend he was in his own bed, not listening to Hermione Granger relate the most intimate details of his life. But staring at a blank wall let him concentrate on the sensation of her touch.  
  
"Severus . you said that you died for her and you would do it again. You wouldn't ."  
  
He could hear where she was taking that. He looked back at her, something like a smile, but too sad to be such, pulling at his lip. "No, I would never . couldn't ."  
  
"I'm glad to hear that," she said, with feeling. She was glad he would never turn back to the Dark Lord, but he had meant more than that. Her fingers were still lying against his skin, warm and gentle.  
  
"Hermione, did I . do that?" he asked, looking at her arms. She shook her sleeves down over the bruises and nodded. "Then I am truly sorry." And he was. Not because he minded inflicting pain - no, that was natural - but because he minded who he had done it to. What power did this girl have over him, to make Severus Snape apologize three times in one term? Why should it bother him so?  
  
Oh.  
  
"Translatio did not work. I figured it out, though I really could have used your help." Her words sent a shiver through him that he tried to hide. She was only talking to ignore his apology, but he was sure she had heard him. "If casting a spell on the half-realm hurt you, then casting a spell on you hurt the half-realm. I had to use Animatus, and Mobilicorpus to get you anywhere." She smiled, as if that gave her pleasure.  
  
"Simple logic," he said. "You always were my best student."  
  
"Severus, I want you to know," she said, again ignoring his admission. "I won't tell anyone. I'll keep your secrets, because I don't think you really meant for me to know at all."  
  
Madame Pomfrey came back in and told Hermione it was time to go. She nodded at him, a silent promise, and left him lying there.  
  
The next time he would open his eyes, it would be Albus Dumbledore waiting there for him. Albus gave him several moments to gather his wits - and Severus knew he would need them, from the look on Albus' face.  
  
"Professor Granger has told everything to Minerva, including you mistaking her for Lily Potter." Albus was clearly not pleased with this. "I am glad you are awake, Severus, because now you will be able to apologize to her. Again."  
  
"She did . what?" Severus may have been a reticent man, but he was rarely lost for words. "And I am to -"  
  
"You called Hermione Granger Lily. You left bruises up and down her arms. And she is in Minerva McGonagall's office, crying."  
  
Severus sat up. He had noticed Hermione's resemblance to Lily the first night she'd been back, and for a long time it had kept him from being able to look at her, lest he be reminded of all he had lost - in so many senses. But he had talked to her, even begun to consider her a friend, or at least a valued acquaintance, and had convinced himself he no longer saw Lily in her. Apparently, he had been mistaken.  
  
"Do you know the damage her divorce form Harry Potter has caused her? She is terrified of the dark and of being alone, and yet cannot bear to keep any company. Ordinarily I would insist that this be her story to tell, but she is not close enough to anyone to give such confidence." Yet again, Severus was struck by Dumbledore's omniscience. It was frightening sometimes how much the man knew about everything around him. "Divorce is almost unheard of among wizards, Severus. Snape is a family even older than Malfoy and Dumbledore: you of all people should know its scarcity."  
  
Malfoy. He had been compared to the Malfoys once before recently: Hermione had demanded what was so wonderful about being like them. A thousand explanations, each of them irrelevant to what Dumbledore was saying, flooded into his mind, of the benefits of growing up around magic: yet wasn't she herself the perfect contradiction to all that?  
  
"There is no-one who knows her pain among our people, no-one I can recommend to her. So, I sent you to her."  
  
Severus did not speak his shock, but it must have been clear on his face.  
  
"Yes, I arranged a few things. It is not out my power to do, Severus." Dumbledore was looking over the rims of his glasses at him, speaking slowly as if to a child. "You know what it is to live in the shadow of a Potter. In fact, you rather remind me of Mr. Weasley."  
  
"Which one?" Severus asked, dryly.  
  
"Mr. Ronald Weasley," Albus clarified without skipping a beat. "He has been privileged to be Harry's second all his life, and eventually got his girl. It is everything you ever wanted, Severus. You cannot believe I paid you no attention your days here. "  
  
Severus began to wish that Albus would just leave. It was too much, too much for him right then. He closed his eyes against the thought of him calling her Lily, against believing that she could be to him what Lily never was .  
  
But she was not Lily. She was Hermione; intelligent, mysterious, handsome Hermione.  
  
Seeing Severus descend into himself, Albus stood up to leave. "I was serious about that apology, Sevrus." He patted his arm, a strangely affection gesture, and left Severus to his thoughts.  
  
Which were manifold. 


	7. Bright of Day

Bright of Day  
  
As Minerva opened the door, her eyes softened into a look of tenderness. Hermione must have looked very bad, to have so strict and harsh a woman pity her. Ah, yes, pity: the last thing in the world she wanted, and yet here, now, it moved her heart. She dissolved into a puddle of tears as soon as the older woman asked her how she was, and had to be led to the divan.  
  
"My dear girl," Minerva muttered, comfortingly. "It was traumatic, I am sure, whatever has happened, but it is over now. Stiff upper lip ."  
  
Hermione shook her head, wiping at her cheeks with the backs of her hands and the hems of her robes. "Severus -"  
  
She couldn't betray him now. What she knew, what she longed to tell, was not her story to pass on. Yet sputtering on the divan before the warm fire, Hermione couldn't help but allow that promise to fade away in her need to be comforted.  
  
"You're fine now, and so is Severus. It's all over."  
  
"But he thought I was her," Hermione whispered, as if afraid he might hear.  
  
The older witch placed a hand on Hermione's, nodding as if that was all she needed to say. "This is not some prophetic revelation, or symbolic exchange."  
  
"But it is," she insisted. "That's just what it is."  
  
Minerva paused, eying the girl suspiciously. Hermione felt as if she were being evaluated by her only friend, making it hard not to cry. "And just why do you care what Severus thinks of you?"  
  
At his name, Hermione winced: she knew damn well why it matter what he thought. He had trusted her calculations, had helped her along, and faced the consequences with her: he had made her an equal, even given her control for the first time in years upon years. It mattered that he recognize her ability, and that she was not a dead woman. That she was Hermione, and that he . like her. And more than that.  
  
Minerva nodded at Hermione's lack of response. "Perhaps this will help to focus your thoughts, Hermione." She flipped through a few back issues of the Prophet in a wicker basket beside the divan. One seemed to suit her, and she ran her eyes over the front page. "This is this morning's edition, Hermione. 'It seems that the former Mrs. Harry Potter has gone missing with her new lover, Severus Snape, a fellow professor at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Rita Skeeter, the astounding and gorgeous reporter .'" Minerva left off, her eyes skimming down several lines. "Ah. 'Managed to gain an interview with Mr. Potter outside his London home.'"  
  
"Sat outside his London home, more like," Hermione said, letting herself laugh a bit.  
  
"When told just hours ago about the disappearance, Potter told this reporter, 'Hermione will be just fine, especially if she's with Snape. He may be terrifying, but he knows what he's doing, and so does she,' Potter claimed, showing much more confidence in his ex-wife than this reporter.'"  
  
Minerva handed Hermione the paper, which featured a snapshot of Harry walking away from Skeeter's camera. She smiled again, and felt much better for it.  
  
Severus was alone in his office. As usual.  
  
The day outside was a clear glare, despite the cooling autumn, and the shouts of children on the pitch penetrated the murky darkness of his office, hidden in the icy dungeon. He had poured through volume after volume of the Hogwarts year books, memoirs of his days as a student that had sat, lonely and untouched, for years upon years beside his frequently referenced texts on Potions, the Dark Arts collection he had accumulated in his youth, and a rather newer assortment of books on the defense therefrom.  
  
He had tortured himself in the days of his recovery with the pictures of Lily, scrutinizing every minute detail that separated her from Hermione. It had been difficult, painstaking work, ironing out the differences both in the books and in his mind. They were both Muggle-born Gryffindors, and both had once proudly worn the name of Potter like a prefect's badge. They were even beautiful, auburn-haired, and brilliant, glowing examples of everything a witch ought to be.  
  
"They were both perfect," he told the crackling fire. He sipped the coffee, pathetic brew, and tried to return himself to his task.  
  
But Hermione had rejected that name, and reverted to the name she had been born with, that Muggle name her father had given her from his father, and his before him. She had made mistakes that even she admitted, where Lily had died for them, and no one but Severus had seen. And what was more, Hermione's genius was with Potions - his own passion - not to mention mundane chemistry. And though she had chosen poorly the first time or two, she accepted him now, even seemed to like him. And she had betrayed him.  
  
He had no idea what to think about his past and present student.  
  
It was easy to let every emotion he had cultivated in those three decades take him over once more: the regret, and the anger. Yet another emotion seemed to overtake him instead, something much akin to what he had felt for Lily, but much matured and colored, changed and new.  
  
"Is it possible?" he asked the fire, willing it to respond. It flickered up, as if to mutely answer the whispered query.  
  
And he thought of how she had gotten them out of the half-realm, using every lesson he had ever taught her. She was not just a fellow human, not just a student, nor colleague: she was an equal now . and it was possible.  
  
He sighed and leaned back in his wing backed chair by the fire, letting his coffee scald his fingertips, enjoying the burning. A Muggle-born Gryffindor, a woman who should hardly be worthy of him, had always been destined to win his heart. His problem had been in assuming he knew which one.  
  
He contented himself with his coffee now, though. "It's insane," he told the cup. "A teasing blight, best forgotten." And he let it cool in his hand, ignoring the table there at his elbow.  
  
She had waited for days to see Severus in the Great Hall. Madame Pomfrey hadn't allowed him any visitors, and now he was in his rooms recovering. He couldn't stay there forever, she reminded herself, and came faithfully if tardily to every meal.  
  
At long last, nearly three days after the incident, as she referred to it, Severus Snape was at dinner. At first, the sight of him stung, like alcohol rubbed into a wound, and she recoiled, telling herself that she wasn't really ready to talk to him.  
  
But there was much to tell him: 3:6:1, for example.  
  
So she took a seat beside him, and asked him how he was. It took him a moment to respond, as if he were gathering his patience. "Well enough, professor."  
  
Distance.  
  
She tried again. "I think I figured it out."  
  
"What's that, professor?"  
  
"The ratio. It's 3:6:1. Oh, and you have to see this." She pulled the front page of that edition of the Prophet and read. "It seems that the former Mrs. Harry Potter has gone missing with her new lover, Severus Snape.' Isn't that ridiculous, Severus?" She tried a laugh to lighten his dark mood.  
  
"Utterly," he replied, darkly. He didn't look up from his dinner. "You figured out a compromise between the two extremes, I see. It was not my intention to upset you in that half-realm. I assure you, I am quite recovered now, professor."  
  
An uncomfortable quiet fell as he returned his full attention to his plate. Her attempts had failed: miserable, and stinging, Hermione ate in silence.  
  
A loud knock sounded on Hermione's office door. With a wave of her hand, she opened it. A young redhead was there, dressed in the green and silver of Slytherin: Ellinor Haverflash.  
  
"Yes?" Hermione said, trying to hide her shock.  
  
The girl looked uncomfortable, a bit. "I hope I'm not bothering you, professor."  
  
"Of course not. What can I do for you?" The girl had a Potions book in her hand, bookmarked. She opened it, and pointed to a page from their assigned reading for the weekend. Hermione must have looked shocked, standing in the doorway.  
  
"I don't bite, professor," Ellinor said. "I was just testing you in class. Calm down." Hermione was shocked. She managed an uneasy smile: Slytherins made her nervous of late, even immature, untried Slytherins, and Miss Haverflash was anything but.  
  
A few tense minutes passed, as Hermione explained chapter two of Magical Drafts and Potions, volume five, chapter four: Concerning Mandrake. It was one of her favorite topics, but somehow she simply couldn't let herself enjoy it until the brief lesson was nearly over. She sent Ellinor back to her common room, but the redhead paused.  
  
"We weren't always what we are now. I know you've read about us, and I know you know Professor Snape. You know we were once noble, we Slytherins, and we purebloods." The girl was very honest, and strikingly serious.  
  
"What makes you tell me this?" Hermione asked, trying to sound natural.  
  
Ellinor smiled. "I may be a student, but I'm not stupid. You spend a lot of time together. You must not hate us or fear us all."  
  
Hermione smiled now, too. "I suppose you're right. A few bad examples don't ruin the lesson." Ellinor nodded sharply and succinctly, then swished away. Maybe it was a Slytherin thing .  
  
Hermione returned to her desk chair and A Guide to Medieval Sorcery, her latest free-reading book about the world before Voldemort. She had just begun a new chapter when another sudden knock jolted her. "Come in, Miss Haverflash," she called.  
  
"I think I'd best not," replied a male voice. Her heart began to pound: she knew that voice, all too well. She had lived with that voice since was eleven years old. If ever there was a voice she recognized, and a voice she had not expected to hear again, it was this. Her hands were shaking: she set down the book on the side table and drew her wand, though for the life of her she had no idea why.  
  
"Harry?" she exclaimed with trembling voice. Her fingers gripped the wand so tightly it too began to tremble: there as terror in her as she crossed the room and opened the door. "Good Lord."  
  
"Hi, Hermione." Harry Potter was on the other side, his messy dark hair in his eyes and a smooth chin such as she had not seen in several years. His blue eyes glinted softly in the failing light of the corridor, and she was without words. "You never came to London last weekend. I got worried."  
  
"You were worried?" she managed, hardly recognizing her own speech.  
  
"Until that Rita Skeeter cow camped out in front of the building, and then I was frightened." He smiled that winning smile of his, the one that made her and every other woman in the wizarding world love him. He was still in his Cannons uniform: he must have been on his way to a game. "And I - I got to thinking, Hermione. I really messed up the last ten years of our lives. And I - I'm sorry."  
  
"You're sorry?" she repeated, hearing herself how stupid she sounded. "No, Harry. I'm the one who should be sorry. I was the one who had an affair with your best friend."  
  
He chuckled softly. "Let's just call it even then." Several awkward moments passed, in which all Hermione could think was how much she wanted to hold him one last time. "Oh, and I wanted to tell you before you heard it on the news or read it in the Prophet. I, um, Ginny and I ."  
  
"Weasley?" Hermione sputtered, like an idiot. Was it possible that he and Ginny ...? "Then you and Ron ."  
  
"We patched things up, right after we heard you'd gone missing." He smiled again, this time sadly. "We were all really worried about you. How are you doing?"  
  
"Well enough. Recovering, thanks."  
  
Harry looked uncomfortable, like he had run out of nice things to say. "I brought this for you, then." He handed her a slip of paper. "So I guess I'll get going. I'm glad you're all right," he said, putting out his hand for hers: it was warm and rough, just as she remembered.  
  
"Good luck in the game tonight, Harry," she whispered, and with a twitch of his cheek, he left her standing there.  
  
She opened the folded parchment: at last, her finalized divorce papers, hand delivered, and sealed from Minister Weasley himself.  
  
Slowly, Hermione was rebuilding herself. Piece by piece, step by step, she was regaining her comfort with her last name, and slowly she was getting used to being herself again. There was no Harry in her life anymore, and no Ron either, though it helped to know that they had not been damaged, that they lived still. She was Professor Granger now, not Mrs. Potter, and in a very real way that alone was enough of a baseboard to work on.  
  
She had been thinking much about the war, too, and how it had utterly changed everything about their world. Yes, their world: the wizarding world, for little had been altered in the Muggle world of her parents, and everything had changed here. Though not so much as she sometimes thought, for the Ministry still remained, without the constant vigil against Dark Magic, and Hogwarts still remained, with its mysteries and ancient history.  
  
She read much about this ancient history now, for the world she lived in now was more like the one that had existed long before her birth, and the continuity of this, more than anything, made her and her divorce feel happily insignificant. She carried the paper in the pocket of her robes, just where she had put it when Harry had given it to her those few days ago. It meant even more of a change in her life than the war had, for it meant personal change, and not that of the entire world. She could feel it even now, the corners of the paper poking her through her heavier, early winter robes.  
  
"I understand your divorce has gone through at last, professor," said a sinister voice behind her. Hermione turned to look at him: Severus was walking directly behind her in the corridor. She wondered how long he had been there, waiting for a moment to penetrate her thoughts. Perhaps he had heard her talking to herself and was taking advantage of a pause in her conversation, so well timed was the comment.  
  
"Yes," she replied, stopping her feet. "Only just - two days ago."  
  
He nodded. 'If I might," he began, stopping now to consider his next words. "Take a turn with you, professor. I would like to speak with you."  
  
"What more can you say than you have already said?" she snapped before she could stop herself. "You have made your feelings toward me abundantly clear."  
  
That seemed to give him real pause: there was a flicker of some emotion she could not identify in his black eyes. "Have I?" he asked, with deadly softness.  
  
She let him hang for a beat before responding. "You do not trust me, and want nothing to do with me. I might say I feel the same."  
  
"Do you," he said, now not so much as meeting her eyes. "Then I will disturb you no further."  
  
But he did not move.  
  
She should have been annoyed, but it was clear that he really wanted to speak with her. "What is it, Severus?" The sound of his name seemed to rile him from that reverie, and he glanced back up at her.  
  
"I had thought it appropriate, perhaps," A hesitation on the final consonant. "To celebrate such a moment."  
  
Was he mocking her? She longed for his respect, and, weak as still she was, that thought was a blow. His face was emotionless, yet his black eyes glittered in earnest, and so she set aside the first nasty comment that came to mind. Hermione took a step forward, toward him.  
  
"What did Voldemort offer you?" she asked, barely over a whisper, unsure why she had just asked that. She knew the answer. He showed no surprise, but met her tone with his own.  
  
"Everything I ever desired, professor. And when it was denied me, I abandoned him." His upper lip twitched into a sneer. "Miss Granger, my life is inconsequential: your predicament and mine are quite different."  
  
Oh, but Hermione Granger had ever been too quick for most people. "And what is your predicament?"  
  
Caught on a technicality. Severus considered walking away then, but he was already too far involved.  
  
"Severus?" Oh, he hated that name. He winced.  
  
"You know damn well," he snarled, like a creature from the Dark Forest. She withdrew from him, childlike, and the rage passed. "I have, you must understand, a temper," he muttered, by way of explanation. "I do, however, reissue my invitation. A celebration, with decent coffee."  
  
He could hardly have kept from observing her preference for coffee over tea, and how she wrinkled her nose when she finally drank of it here. He drew from his pocket a phial, and handed it to her.  
  
"What is it?" she murmured, taking it from him.  
  
"What do you think?" he replied, more gently that she had heard him since their first meeting, in this very passageway. She passed it back to him, still afraid of his 'temper,' as he had called it, and he smiled, a dark smile that suited him in a peculiar way. "3:6:1, you said, I believe?"  
  
"A compromise was the only option," she said.  
  
The smile passed from his mouth, and he looked away. "Forgive me, professor."  
  
She straightened herself, feeling much more comfortable suddenly. "For what, Severus? And I thought we agreed on what to call me."  
  
"Hermione," he said, the thin smile returning. He sprinkled the power over them, letting it become blue as it fluttered through the air. "Sevilla."  
  
At la Taza y Pluma in Seville, Severus sat directly opposite Hermione, each enjoying their coffee in a comfortable silence. He asked for the bill, but she snatched it from his hands, as she had done what felt like months ago.  
  
"I'm an independent woman now, but of course you haven't heard. I heard back from the Ministry, even without my being in London." As the words slid, against her will, from proud to revealing, she looked away: she had no idea why it felt comfortable to tell him any of this. "I have my salary here . er, at Hogwarts . and what I saved up before . well, before. And I get, ah, ten thousand Galleons from Harry every year. I didn't want it," she said quickly, sensing the look stealing across his face without needing to see it. "But he insisted. He said . He insisted."  
  
Severus decided not to ask what she had been about to say.  
  
"I guess I can set it aside for . for any kids I might have, someday." She checked the wistfulness in her tone, making it harder and harder to look up, still unsure as to whence all these words were coming, her cheeks growing hotter by the moment. "You know, for them to go to . Hogwarts . and for college. That's a good thing for them to do, you know . college."  
  
"For you too," he said. He hadn't spoken in a long time, she realized.  
  
"For me too."  
  
They were again silent. Severus dared to gaze at her, now that her face was downturned, and he let himself consider the weight of what she had just revealed to him. There was no smile on her pretty face, just thought and worry. He wished he could have done something, anything, to remove that bit of worry.  
  
"Did you go to college?" she asked, that wistful tone back.  
  
The contortion of the corner of his mouth again, the creases around his eyes, the lift of an eyebrow: he was smiling. "At Toledo. I considered going back for a while ."  
  
"Why didn't you?"  
  
"I'm more . important at Hogwarts. Important to my House, important to Dumbledore, important to ." he cut off suddenly, realizing what he had been about to say. He took a nervous sip of his coffee, forgetting to taste it.  
  
"Important to me," she filled in for him, entirely of her own accord. "Because you are, Severus."  
  
Oh, he hated that name, wished she hadn't had to use it for a confession like that . a confession .  
  
He met her eyes, beautiful brown like the sand on the beach below them. A confession: could it really be considered so? Her words, so simple, echoed in his mind. He would treasure them forever, no matter what they meant. To anyone else they would have been normal conversation between friends, but even that title was too far a stretch for him to take in. Could it be that he meant more to her than even the unimaginable friendship? Could she have meant her words as the confession he prayed, in just that instant, that they be?  
  
All this passed in a moment. Hermione looked back down at the raspberry cappuccino.  
  
"So much silence," he said, leaning into that consonant, turning it into a hiss, a plea for more. He could hardly stand where he was allowing his mind to wander . could hardly bear the implications . the beauty of the moment, of her words, even if they meant nothing to her .  
  
"Because you haven't said anything," Hermione whispered, though even that trembled a bit. She was waiting for him, he realized.  
  
He would have dearly loved to have swept down to the floor at her feet and tell her everything he had ever felt for her, every wishful thought he had ever had, to confess everything to her and beg her forgiveness, even acceptance, to confess and find himself worthy of one such as her. He wanted to weep, to strip away the black robes he wore like a shroud, and tell her everything.  
  
Yet Severus Snape had ever been a subtle man, and he reached one hand across the table and found hers. He pressed it, only slightly, and she looked up at him, her expression unreadable. "Hermione ." His voice came out hoarse, like the man he was, desperate for the water that she was to him. "Hermione, I ."  
  
The words stopped. She was looking at him, innocent and perfect. She understood, he knew, just as he had understood, and he could feel the hope in her eyes reflected in his own. With a fluid motion, Hermione left her hard backed chair and swept around the table, into his lap. She pressed a kiss into him - when had he ever been kissed, much less like that? - filling him again with the sweetness of her scent. For a long moment he could barely register her action, his flooded senses beyond understanding, and then he returned it, slowly becoming aware that this was real, that she, Hermione, was here, in his arms that he almost forgot to put around her. And Severus could taste tears, though who knew if they were hers or his.  
  
The nights are long without you, most beloved, And wither I away in the cold light Of dying wand and ancient spell above. The evening's morning waits, a teasing blight, That kills me with its broken promises And whispered words of adoration dear . 


End file.
